THE COOL OF ENGLISH DECEMBER 2016 FIRST EDITION, ISSUE #8

A Corpus to Bridge Chinese Students and Researchers to the

International Academic World A research project led by the School of English has been reported by Southeast Business Newspaper! A corpus is being built here at UNNC to compile student English so that international researchers can have access to the development of the English of Chinese students here at Nottingham Ningbo. Dr Yu-Hua Chen, an assistant professor in the School of English, is now endeavoring to establish UNNC's first Corpus of Academic Written and Spoken English (CAWSE) which can be used not only for researchers, but also for students to improve their academic English language skills. The CAWSE project aims to build a large collection of students’ English language samples from UNNC. A variety of assessment tasks (both written and spoken) and speech events (e.g. group discussions) will be collected from the campus. CAWSE is a project with 6 team members from the School of English and Center for English Language Education (CELE). The corpus is projected to take 3-5 years to complete, including transcription, tagging and preliminary annotations, as language data and research will therefore be accessible to the public. Dr Yu-Hua Chen believes this corpus can bridge Chinese students and researchers to the International Academic World. Written by Michael Paul Stevens & Zhou Qianqian

Please scan the QR code to read the original news report by Southeast Business Newspaper in Chinese.

Come & Join the Editorial Team! Cong Mu (Mike), Liu Sibei (Bella), Wang Hanpeng (Peng),

Veecock Candace (Candy), Zheng Yangyang (Jane).

Ideas for a submission, interesting photos with the School of English Students…

Contact Mike at: mucong@nottingham.edu.cn

The Cool of English

Student Bulletin The School of English

The University of Nottingham

Ningbo China

Dear All, The Cool wishes you a very Merry Christmas and an early Happy New Year 2017! This year 2016 has been an incredible year for The Cool. How has your 2016 been? Have your wishes come true? Do you like things the way they are now? Since 2017 is only a few days away, how will you celebrate the New Year? The Cool wishes to be even COOLER! We look forward to the upcoming year and attach great expectations to it. We would like to tell even more interesting stories of the School of English – your stories! We believe that 2017 is a new start for us to achieve more and we welcome your participation. Good luck for those taking exams! We wish you all a Happy 2017, success in your study and whatever goals you set for yourself. All the best! The Cool

Merry Christmas!

THE COOL OF ENGLISH DECEMBER 2016 FIRST EDITION, ISSUE #8

From Student to Staff – Q&A with Dougal Macbeth

Dougal is a previous Master’s student from the School of English at UNNC and has now become a member of staff in the Centre for English Language Education (CELE). He is the winner of the 2nd Mandarin Competition for Foreigners in Ningbo and was named “Zhuang Yuan” which is a Chinese term for the highest ranking candidate in a competitive exam. Q.1: You recently won a Mandarin competition. What is the name of the competition? When was it? How did you hear about it? What prompted you to participate in it? It was the ‘Second Ningbo Foreigner’s Mandarin Competition’, held on the 14th of September at Tianyi Pavillion, the oldest library in China still standing. I received emails about it from two colleagues, who had both recommended my participation to the Confucius Institute at UNNC. I participated because I our school needed a representative, and it felt like a fun thing to do. Q.2: What was it like participating in the competition? What was your choice of contribution/performance and why? Each participant was required to prepare a short speech on their experience of traditional Chinese festivals, and a short performance of their choosing, as well as completing a character-reading task on stage. There was an interesting mix of participants, from a variety of different backgrounds. In the audience, I sat in between a Russian student who performed ‘kuai-ban’, and a Ghanaian who danced. When it was my turn, I spoke about differences in the celebration of Spring Festival between the Northeast of China where I had lived for two years, and Yunnan province, my fiancée’s hometown. My performance was an erhu (Chinese bowed two-stringed lute) solo “Horse Race”, inspired by a traditional Mongolian folksong. I rushed through my speech because it was a little long, but I was struck with the beautiful acoustics of the hall as soon as I played the first bar on my erhu, and thoroughly enjoyed that performance. Q.3: How did you achieve such a high level of fluency in Mandarin? Any tips for others learning Mandarin? I studied formally for three years in New Zealand, and have been living in China for four, studying more sporadically here when I’ve had time. I think it would be expected to have developed some proficiency after all this immersion. For anyone studying a language, I would recommend taking advantage of the powerful computer-assisted language learning software available these days, such as a good flashcard system based on spaced-repetition (SRS). Flashcards require active recall – you aren’t just passively viewing the language; you need to retrieve the information from your memory. SRS aims to test you on language just before you are about to forget it, to ensure a balance between forgetting words, and wasting time reviewing words you know well. Using mnemonics to form strong associations can maximize retention as well. Words are like the

building blocks of language, and after memorizing the fundamental vocabulary of a language you can pick up more words effortlessly just by listening or reading, through understanding the meaning of unfamiliar words in enough different contexts of words you do know. Q.4: What is it like moving from School of English MA student to UNNC staff in CELE? As I had already been doing similar work for the past few years (including tutoring IAT part-time at Nottingham while doing my MA), this was a non-issue. Starting full-time with CELE was much easier for me than for other teachers because I already knew the campus, city, and of course Chinese language and culture. Q.5: Any tips you would like to share with international students coming to study in the School of English at UNNC or to UNNC in general? Try to venture beyond the comfort of the international bubble. Get involved in the clubs and organizations, and if you have the chance to stay in a Chinese home over the holidays, take it!

Interviewer: Candace Veecock (Via email)

Love moments Han Songlin

She opened the door;

The clouds ushered under her feet. And,

When he saw her, His heart jumped into the next universe.*

Then she told her a word; He could not help to hear.

But, When she said to him,

Warm light froze a slice of red.

He held her hands, As grew wings on her back.

However, There is a kiss,

Last waltz disappeared in the moonlight *First stanza provided by Professor James Mirrione